Naruto 1. Hangovers

She smoothes back the long blond hair (which turns black in her mind), crooning a soft song that can't be heard over the retching, gently washing the sweaty face with a cool cloth, touching the pale skin and feeling another's. She helps up the limp body, carefully helping her friend (her mother) to the bed, laying her down, undressing her, slipping her beneath the covers, singing softly, sending her into a deep sleep before slipping away down the hall to make a hangover tonic. The motions are ritual, a tradition maintained all her life, from the day that she was old enough to walk and understand till whenever all of this stopped. When she has finished the tonic, she moves to the bathroom, cleaning up the floor and the sink, propping a window open to let in the sharp winter air. She feels sick, deep down inside, but at the same comforted by the routine. She has done it all her life, and she will continue to do it until someone else takes over for her. She takes care of them, and she always will.

The next morning, Ino has hardly woken when she pushes the tonic against her lips and makes her swallow. Immediately, the pain is gone, and instead breakfast is there, hot and steaming and delicious. As she watches her best friend eat, she smiles, and tries to forget black hair, streaming over a sweat-soaked back as her small child's hands push it back, black hair that mixes with red on the tiles of the bathroom where it all starts, where it all ends. Ino looks up at her, and in her mind the blue eyes turn to green, staring up at the ceiling, empty.

"Sakura, I'm sorry," she says, embarrassed.

"_Sakura, I'm sorry," she says, humiliated._

"It's alright," she says, to both of them. "Really.

"No, it's not."

"_No, it's not."_

She smiles. "Really, Ino. I'm used to it."

"Oh." Ino turns her beautiful head to stare out the window to the snow-covered town.

"Eat your breakfast," Sakura says before walking out of the room and into the bathroom down the hall, where she quietly closes the door and sits down on the cold tiles, tucked in between the sink and the toilet, body curled up as it had been that night so many years ago, when she sat and watched as her mother's blood turned the floor red. It makes the tile warm, makes her feet slip as she tries to get away. There is so much, and there is nothing she can do. There is no tonic she can make, no food that can comfort, no song that can bring upon peaceful sleep. She feels tired, trapped in that small space, until the door opens and Ino comes and gently pulls her out into her arms, rocking her back and forth like a child, humming tunelessly as she shakes and shakes and shakes. And when they walk out of that bathroom, they are as they were, talking and laughing, trying to cover the horror of what has been, what could have been, and what will be.

They are there to save each other.

They are the only ones who know how.

**A/N:**

**This is going to be longer if I ever get around to it. It doesn't really work as a one shot.**


	2. Nightmares

Her mother stands at the end of a hallway, smiling, and holding her arms out.

_Come, Sakura, _she says, her voice a whisper of wind that blows down the passage, ruffling her hair. She begins to run, but the floor stretches out and tears, a gaping mouth appearing, snapping at her heels.

_Mother, mother! _She screams, and reaches out for her mother's hands, but her arms go straight through them and she falls, her eyes always on her mother, who simply smiles vacantly as she watches her daughter torn to pieces by a monster.

She awakes, shuddering.

Next to her, Naruto rolls over, mumbling.

She gets up, her naked skin shivering in the cold air and makes her way to the bathroom, clutching at the walls as she goes. Suddenly, she is running, because she can hear the monster behind her, and she trips and falls in through the open door, landing sprawled on the frozen floor, gasping for breath that doesn't seem to exist. All she can see are her mother's eyes, staring blankly down into hers, damning her.

She screams.

He is there, collecting her in his arms, calming, pressing her to him, carrying her back to the bed, curling close to her beneath the blankets, with her wrapped as tightly around him as she can get, shivering, frozen to the core. She hears that she is whimpering, and he gently strokes her hair, until she is calm, until she is quiet. She can hear the thunder of his heart and it sounds so _good, _so _alive. _And slowly, sleep comes.

The next day, she goes over to Ino's.

"I had nightmares," she says as they sip warm tea and watch the snow falling, Ino finishing up a report of her latest mission.

Ino remains silent. She is the only one who knows. Maybe she will remain that way. Maybe not.

"All I can see is her eyes. I'm running and then falling, and then dying, and all she does is look at me and smile and her eyes are so uncaring. It's like a void and I'm drowning in it, and there are people all around, people that I love, but they don't try to help, they just watch me drown." She takes a sip of tea and shudders slightly.

Ino nods. "I get those too, sometimes…different dreams, of course, but still…it's so…absolute." She scribbles something on the report then pushes it away. "I feel like I'm breathing but I'm not getting any air, I just think I am." She sighs. "I haven't had one in years."

They sit, one drowning, one suffocating, both waiting for that gasping breath that renews life and hope, but that seems to never come.

That night, she sleeps peacefully, curled in his arms. That night she breathes, but shallowly.

Weeks and weeks go by, and she sometimes wakes up on cold tile, sometimes in the hall, sometimes in bed, sometimes alone, but always, always gasping for something that she cannot get. The water runs over her head and it turns red, filling her up with itself until she bursts like a balloon that is too full, and she can only hope that someone is there to pick up again and put her back together.

But one day, no one will.


	3. Drinks

She likes to drink, she decides after her third glass. It makes everything glow with a warm light, makes the shadows recede, makes her forget. She isn't an angry drunk, nor is she a happy drunk; she's a blank drunk, lost, the kind who sits in the bar and who look so pathetic that the barman doesn't have the heart to tell them to go home because it's obvious they have none. Sometimes, when she's really drunk, she traces the scars that he left, and the places where the scars are only visible under the skin. But mostly, she just tips her head back and tries to forget.

She can't explain it when she gets the call from her mother, and probably she never will be able to. It is a thrill of excitement, of sadness shot with exultation, because revenge has finally exacted itself. He was shot in an alley on his way home from a bar. As she is torn in two, she hears herself laughing. It all seems too good to be true, to nightmarish to be anything but.

Tonight, she has been drinking.

She is alone, and she is drinking straight from the bottle, wandering around in a robe with all of the windows open, letting in the frozen air. She is singing—she's not sure what tune it is—and dancing slightly as she walks without purpose around her apartment. Her long blond hair is hanging down her back, free and silver in the moonlight that flows in. Finally, she collapses, asleep, which is how Sakura finds her when she comes the next morning. After cleaning her up and putting her in bed, she closes all of the windows and puts things back, making the apartment neat until Ino emerges, groaning, to swallow some more tonic. They don't talk about it—neither particularly wants to. There is no need; they already know what they will say.

So instead they collapse on the couch with magazines and talk about everything and anything. Sakura talks about her upcoming mission—a small thing, just a retrieval, she's leaving tomorrow—and Ino talks about her last one, which she just got back from. They discuss the war, they discuss lovers, they carefully walk around the subject that looms above their heads, playing careful games so as to make sure none of the pieces disturb it. However, on knocks against it, without warning, harsh, cold.

"When are you getting back?"

"The eighteenth."

And time freezes. She watches as Sakura's eyes go dead behind the magazine, and feels her own heart stop beating. And then, everything resumes, albeit a bit more careful, a bit more delicate.

"Or maybe the nineteenth, I'm not sure. I only got the briefing this morning, and they didn't specify the date."

Afternoon sun is filtering in when Sakura gets up, saying that she has to go pack.

"I'm leaving early tomorrow, but I'll see you afterwards."

They hug, holding each other tightly, never wanting to let go, before breaking it, Ino watching as Sakura walks down the escape flight and into the busy streets, pulling up her hood to keep the wind out. She aches inside as she goes and lies back down on the couch, picking up the magazine Sakura was reading and flipping through it, before getting up and going to the fridge to pull out a bottle of Grey Goose and opening it.

Tonight, she hates to drink.

But she will anyway.


	4. Lies

She can feel the weight of the rain breaking her as she struggles down the path, her feet unwilling to move, the pain greater than anything. She can taste the ash in her mouth, feel it in her pores, beneath her skin. She can't see—instead she moves blindly, tripping occasionally. Finally, she falls, hard, and lies there, her face pressed into the mud, her arms and legs sprawled awkwardly. Shards of bone poke through her skin, cleaned white by the rain as she lies there, unable to summon up anything any longer.

_arms and legs akimbo stretching oddly from where she fell wrists and throat opened to the world mouth sewn shut eyes wide and staring she has watched as her mother causes herself the most pain that she can imagine she has watched as she falls falls falls into her own blood blood blood blood blood_

An ANBU team on the way back from a mission find her. They have passed the smoldering wreckage of what was once a village, a forest, seen the newly created cliff on the mountain side. She looks up into a bird mask, and wishes to die.

The leader carries her back, gently. The medic tries to heal her, but something stops him—her own chakra is molding against her wounds, pressing them out, stopping the healing. She will die soon—oh god, she just hopes it is soon.

And then she is back, in a warm bed in the hospital, an IV in her arm, bandages wrapping her in white linen skin. Someone is holding her hand, stroking her hair, singing a song in the quiet, and she feels comforted, even though she doesn't open her eyes.

Weeks pass, and she is out, having healed, trying to forget everything that happened. They aren't letting her on missions anymore—not after what happened. Not for a while, anyhow. She hasn't told them what happened, but they know what the site looked like, they know that no one else survived, they know that innocent people died. Naruto goes away on missions, Ino goes away on missions, and she is left all alone, that is until he comes knocking.

She opens the door, surprised to see him there in the rain. His coffee-colored hair is soaked, hanging down his back in his customary style. She invites him in, making tea quickly before coming out and sitting down in front of him. She makes small talk for a while—he isn't very talkative, it's mainly her doing the talking, until he stops her.

"What happened?" He asked, his voice cutting through hers like a knife.

"Excuse me?"

"On that mission. Something happened. I saw it. I saw you. Who did that?"

Something catches her attention. "You saw me? When? In the hospital?"

He smirks. "No. I found you and carried you back."

A bird mask flits across her memory.

"Oh. Thank you. You saved my life."

"It didn't seem to want saving." She pales, remembering what Tsunade had told her.

"Thank you anyway."

"What happened?"

She fidgets, playing with her cup, then her hair, not looking at him.

"Things got…out of hand, I guess. I can't remember it very well.

_Liar, _his white eyes scream, and it's true. She can remember every single second of it, every burning, torturous second. She will never, ever forget.

"What jutsus do that to a town?" He asks, his voice accusing.

"Jutsu." She whispers it, but he catches the word, and his eyes widen. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Hn." He gets up and walks out, the door closing quietly behind him, leaving her sitting there, remembering the feeling as her body burned and suffocated and was torn apart and crushed and everything else all at the same time.

That night, she sits in the bathroom between the toilet and the sink, with the lights on, and screams until she has no voice.

This time, no one helps.


End file.

Naruto